Death in the Andamans (22 page)

Charles said briefly, cutting short Valerie's anxious questions: ‘We can't talk here. We'd better all go down to the Mess.' And turning abruptly on his heel he led the way back to the hall and out into the clammy embrace of a fog that seemed to grow thicker by the minute.

Mist filled the long, tree-shaded drive with a dense shifting greyness that smelt as dank as a sea cave uncovered by a spring tide, and when at last the Mess loomed out of it as a dark, dimly seen shape and Charles pushed open the front door, the fog came in with them and eddied about the silent hall.

Charles's quarters, which lay on the far side of the ante-room, consisted of a small bathroom and a large, white-washed and somewhat untidy bed-sitting room decorated with several photographs of Valerie, some depressing school and regimental groups and a clutter of golf clubs and fishing-tackle. ‘Hardly the Ritz,' said Charles, ushering in his guests, ‘but at least it's reasonably private. And there are quite a few things that have come up for discussion.' He closed the door behind him, and Nick sat down and said tiredly and without preamble: ‘We found Ferrers's body, and Dutt says that he was murdered.'

‘I know,' said Valerie with a shudder. ‘Leonard told us. But he seems to think that Dutt must have made a mistake.'

Nick shook his head. ‘Not a chance, I'm afraid. We've been checking back over that half hour in the bay in some detail, and one thing is quite clear: Ferrers Shilto survived the overturning of the boats. I can swear to that myself, because I caught sight of him clinging to the keel of one that bumped into ours, and there was nothing much the matter with him then. But sometime just after that — or it may have been any time during the half hour that we were all in the drink — someone smashed in the back of his head.'

Copper gave a swiftly suppressed exclamation, and Nick turned his head sharply towards her. ‘What is it, Coppy?'

‘Nothing,' said Copper hastily. ‘I only wondered I mean, how could anyone tell it was murder — a blow on the back of the head? It sounds as if it could easily have happened by accident.'

‘This particular blow,' said Nick grimly, ‘was given with the end of a tiller. The tillers on those boats are the kind that have a metal-bound slot at one end that fits over the top of the rudder, and the wound on the back of Ferrers's head was made by someone holding the handle of a tiller and hitting him damned hard with the slotted end. There's no mistake about that; the imprint is quite clear. It wasn't spotted before because his hair hid the mark and the blood had been washed off by the sea.'

‘But I still don't see why it couldn't
____
' began Copper.

‘Listen, sweetheart,' interrupted Charles briskly, ‘the end of the tiller that killed Ferrers is usually attached to the rudder. Therefore it could only have come in contact with his skull once it had come unshipped. If it had been floating round loose and a wave had knocked it against his head, the very most it could have done would have been to leave a bit of a bruise. Instead of which it hit him with enough force to smash in his skull, and also produced a hell of a bruise — and a lot of swelling, which apart from anything else, appears to prove that it was done before and not after death. Now perhaps we can go on?… Good! Nick, I think we'd better have a bit of recapping from you. Just to get the record straight.'

‘All right.' Nick leant back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling as though arranging his thoughts, and presently he said slowly: ‘On Christmas Day — that is, yesterday — we went for a walk round the island at about five o'clock, and very unfortunately for the murderer, Ferrers's body turned up. Even more unfortunately for him, it had escaped being mutilated by fish or reefs, and Dan, who was a doctor, was on the spot. We don't know enough to do more than guess at this bit, but it's pretty obvious that something made Dan suspect that Ferrers had not died by drowning … And if I hadn't been a triple-distilled idiot,' added Nick with sudden bitterness, ‘I'd have realized that he suspected it from his subsequent behaviour.'

‘That applies to all of us,' said Copper quickly.

Nick threw her the ghost of a grin and stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette, grinding it down in the ash-tray with a viciousness that betrayed the state of his nerves. He lit another, and said: ‘Dan apparently saw enough on the beach yesterday evening to make him suspect that this wasn't a plain case of drowning, and I can only suppose that he didn't say anything then and there because it wasn't his job to cut in on the local medico. But of course it's quite obvious that that young ass of an assistant is as much use as a sick headache, and could barely be trusted to tell the difference between scarlet fever and heat rash. I gather he barely looked at Ferrers's body other than to see it shoved into the Guest House and sewn up in canvas. And I suppose one can hardly blame him. After all, in justice to young Dutt, it seemed a perfectly clear case to all of us! — except to Dan, who as far as we can make out must have slipped down to the Guest House late last night to take another look at the corpse. And here we stop guessing for a bit and come to the sentry's evidence. Charles can tell you about that. The sentry was one of his chaps and he did most of the talking.'

Charles leant an elbow on the shelf above the fireplace and took up the tale: ‘Weekes, the chap on sentry duty, says that Dan came out of the house just before midnight last night. It was raining a bit and he was wearing one of the orderlies' mackintosh capes: they found a smear of blood on it…' Charles's voice was suddenly uncertain, and he jerked his shoulders uncomfortably and hurried on: ‘The sentry challenged him, and Dan said he couldn't sleep and was going to take a stroll, gave the chap a packet of cigarettes, and pushed off. That sounds all right as far as it goes, but here comes the rub: Weekes swears blind that Dan returned about an hour and a half later, nodded to him, popped into the house and bolted the door behind him. He says he heard the hall clock strike half past one immediately afterwards. Now if he is right, how did Dan get out again, and why?'

‘Obvious,' said Copper briefly. ‘It wasn't Dan.'

‘Don't talk tripe, Coppy. The sentry swears
____
'

‘I don't care
what
the sentry swears! It's so obvious, it simply
screams
at you! You said Dan was wearing one of the orderlies' capes. Well, they have a big hood that goes right over your head and
____
'

Nick said: ‘Charles, you and I should see a brain specialist. Of course that's it! Dan goes down to the Guest House to take a look at the body, and while he's there he's caught at it and murdered. We know that he was killed there, for there were stains on the floor that had been wiped up; but not quite well enough. The murderer substitutes Dan's body for Ferrers', takes Ferrers's body off and hides it, and having cleared away all traces of his dirty work puts on the mackintosh cape, and with the hood pulled well over his head, walks calmly back to the house.'

Charles said: ‘I ought to have a nurse. Of course. It is, as my grandmother's cook used to say, “As plain as the nose on me face”.'

‘And,' pointed out Copper, ‘I notice that the sentry didn't say that Dan actually spoke to him when he came back.'

‘That's right,' said Charles. ‘He didn't speak. And I don't know if it has struck anyone else, but it seems to me to point to two things. The first being that whoever returned to the house inside that mackintosh was not only the murderer, but someone who must have watched Dan leave and listened to his conversation with the sentry. Otherwise how did he know that he could return to the house without being challenged?'

‘But —' Valerie's voice shook — ‘but that would mean that the murderer was someone in the house!' In spite of her recent suspicions concerning Mrs Stock, the idea that a double murderer might actually be a member of the household was incredibly and horribly shocking. ‘Not necessarily,' said Nick. ‘It would have been obvious to anyone that to get to the Guest House Dan must have passed the sentry. Therefore it was a fair gamble that the sentry would pass him in again without comment.'

‘But Nick — if it wasn't someone from the house, why should they come back again?' ‘Alibi,' said Nick shortly. ‘Muddy the trail. And a very sound idea too, because if Dan had failed to come back, it's quite on the cards that the sentry would have become uneasy and reported the fact sometime last night. There would probably have been a search within an hour or two of the murder, and then heaven knows what might not have come to light. So Dan
has
to return, because with luck Ferrers will have been buried before any serious attention is given to the fact that he is missing.'

Valerie said unhappily: ‘I do hope to goodness you're right. It would be too awful if it had to be someone in the house. But…'

‘Of course I'm right. That's the hell of it. It widens the field too much. If we could only be certain that the man who impersonated Dan did
not
get out of the house again, we'd be able to narrow down our list of suspects considerably. As it is, the only solid fact that we seem to have got out of all this is that Dan died sometime between midnight and one o'clock. And I'm not sure that that's much help.'

‘Yes, it is,' said Charles. ‘Because it adds a bit of support to your theory that the chap who came home at one-thirty got out again.'

‘How do you make that out?'

‘Well, it's really all a matter of timing, isn't it? Dan leaves the house about midnight, chats to the sentry, and shoves off to the Guest House — say at five minutes to twelve. Allow a good few minutes for getting down there, and more for finding a way in — and by the way we found a ground-floor window with a broken catch so presumably he got in by that. We can't tell whether he had time to take a look at Ferrers, or if he was murdered before he had the chance. But I imagine he couldn't have been killed much before twelve-thirty: which gives the murderer just about an hour in which to kill Dan, swop his body with Ferrers's, sew it up again in the tarpaulin, hide Ferrers's body, clear up the blood on the floor and get back to the house again. Can't be done!'

‘Why not?' inquired Copper. ‘If he worked quickly, surely it's perfectly possible?'

‘Possible. But damned unlikely! Nick didn't tell you where we found Ferrers's body. I'm afraid this is going to put you off the soup at the next Guildhall banquet you are invited to attend, but as a matter of fact it was found very cunningly stowed away in the turtle tank.'

‘Ugh!'
said Valerie, shuddering. ‘What a place to hide it in. Of course it would float and anyone looking in would have seen it.'

‘You're wrong there,' said Charles. ‘It was, in fact, very neatly done. And if it hadn't been for the — er — unusual behaviour of the turtles, it might not have been spotted for days. You know that summer-house thing that is built out over the top of half the tank?'

‘Of course.'

‘Well, the body had been carried round the outer wall of the tank on the seaward side of the summer-house, and lowered into the darkest corner of the tank behind the pillar that supports the floor. It was hanging there by a rope that had been tied under its arms and then fastened to the crossbeams. An ingenious job which must have taken quite a bit of doing in the dark.'

‘For goodness sake, why there?' asked Copper breathlessly. ‘Of all silly places!'

‘Not so silly,' said Nick dryly. ‘It would have been a damned good hiding-place if it hadn't been for the turtles, because since it's right on the bay, the minute the sea went down all the killer had to do was to get there after dark, haul up the body, tie a weight to it and push it off the end of the Club breakwater at the turn of the tide. As for Dan, who would not have been seriously missed or searched for until after the funeral, he would be presumed to have taken a toss in the mist and fallen into the sea.'

‘Then what we've really got to find out,' said Copper slowly, ‘is not who killed Dan, but who killed Ferrers. And then we've got the answer to both.'

‘That's about it. The reason for Dan's murder is obvious: he was killed because he discovered, or suspected, that Ferrers had been murdered. What we need now is a motive for the killing of Ferrers.'

‘Mount Harriet!' said three voices simultaneously.

‘You mean that conversation we overheard at the picnic? Yes: I think that's fairly obvious. So I suggest our first suspect goes down as Mr John Shilto.'

Valerie said: ‘Listen, Nick — I don't know about you, but I shall soon be getting hopelessly muddled. This morning Coppy and I decided that we must have some method in our madness, so we made a list of possible suspects so that we could enter up everything “for” or “against” each person. Let's stick to it.'

‘Good scheme,' approved Charles. ‘Produce your suspects.' Copper handed over the list that they had compiled earlier in the day, and Nick and Charles read it with some amusement. ‘Can't you see Amabel spreading death and destruction with a tiller?' grinned Charles.

‘The same thought gave us the one laugh of a mildewed morning,' admitted Valerie. ‘But Copper said there was no use making a list of suspects unless we put down everyone and then started eliminating by proof to narrow it down.'

Nick said: ‘Copper is right. When it comes to murder you can't start by saying, “I'm sure so-and-so can't have done it, he's got such a stupid face,” or “Of course she didn't do it! she's got such an angelic disposition.” You've got to suspect everyone.'

‘We have,' admitted Copper frankly. ‘You'll find your own name on the list.'

Nick gave a short and rather bitter laugh. ‘Well, why not? You don't really know much about me, do you?'